Jungle walks, razor grass, and first week of school

I've been here for a little over a week now and I absolutly love it here! Its so beautiful, and the school and village where I'm living is so peaceful. I feel closer to God here than I've ever felt. Our village is about an hour boat ride up two rivers, and the school is 2 miles up the tractor trail from the village. The school itself is in a 12 acre clearing in the jungle, the round school building is set in the middle of campus surrounded by the kitchen, the 2 dorms, several staff duplexes, and the wood shop that is currently under construction.

I've had a weeks worth of class now. This week I've actually had 3 days with 2 hour long class periods since another class isn't starting till this coming week so I've been using their class period along with mine. I'm having a blast teaching! I was really nervous about it coming down here, but I'm enjoying it so far. My first quiz/test is this coming tuesday so I hope all my students do well.

We have 11 students so far, and one other girl is coming in tonight so we'll have 12. I'm the ladies dean, I have 4 young ladies right now, soon to be 5, and I have been blessed to have a group awesome girls! Friday night I came back to the dorm after practicing for special music and found 3 of the girls having a Bible study with the one girl who is not an Adventist, wow I was amazed and happy for that. Keep our school, and the girls in your prayers!

Yesterday after church a group of us went on a hike in the jungle. We left at almost 4pm, and the sun goes down here at around 5:45. The hike began on the sandy tractor trail that runs by the school, and we crossed the runway where the mission planes land. About a half mile down the trail we decided to take a smaller sand trail off to the left to see where it would take us. It gradually became more and more narrow until it was a single person path that was dirt packed covered with dead leaves. We headed deeper, and deeper into the jungle, watching for any wildlife or other interesting sitings, still hoping to see one of the jaguars whose prints we see around campus.

Soon the path became muddy since it was getting close to the river, and it was where the water flows when we get heavy rain. Thankfully I was barefoot since I had came in flip-flops and had taken them off, so it was quite fun to run through the mud. Three of us, Aaron, Kurt and myself decided to start running down the trail since everyone else was proceeding rather slowly and we wanted to have fun, so off we ran. Taking turns here and there, and leaping over fallen trees and other things on the path. We ran for about 10 minutes when suddenly I felt sharp pain tear throuh my left foot and ankle, and suddenly realized that the trail had become over run with razor grass. Instantly Aaron and I, who were barefoot and bare legged, stopped and began to attempt to disentangle ourselves from the dreaded plant. For those of you who are unaware of what this grass is, it is a tall grass that will reach out its blades and grab your skin and once it is on your skin it will tear into your epidermis until it is reduced to bleeding shreds. Well, okay, maybe I did exaggerate a bit, but it is very painful and does cut up any skin it comes into contact with. I have defiantly learned a health respect for this grass.

Well after about 10 min of carefully backtracking up the trail, attempting to keep from incuring any further war wounds without success, we finally escaped the clutches of this dreaded green plant. Now we began running again, much more carefully this time, and when we arrived back on the main trail from our little detour, found the rest of the group. Since the sun had set, and darkness was fast approaching we decided it best to begin our trek back to the school. We arrived just before it was totally dark, muddy, battle scarred, and without seeing our jaguar. Oh well, I guess there's always next time!